


Unkind

by MusicalLuna



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Broken Bones, Field Surgery, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Inaccuracies, POV Natasha Romanov, Serious Injuries, punctured lung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-12-06 06:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11594439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/pseuds/MusicalLuna
Summary: Natasha was taught to be unkind, but she's doing her best to change that.





	Unkind

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked:  
> talked down a suicidal kid and then got slammed with a mountain of paperwork. and didn't get to eat dinner. :( steve's supersoldier resistance to drugs means he's awake/needs to be held down for an excruciatingly painful field surgery.  
> \--  
> that is epically shitty, i’m so sorry :/

It’s raining and that’s a perfect example of how unflinchingly unkind the world is.

Steve is lying curled up in a ball on the wet, muddy grass, somehow having made himself small enough to be nearly obscured behind the shield.

He yells and lashes out with it when Natasha skids to her knees beside him and only just misses taking off her face. She feels the air displacement as it passes.

“Steve!” she barks, “it’s me!”

He uncurls a little, enough for her to see one wild blue eye peek out at her. “Nat? Sh-shit, sorry,” he chokes out.

“Where are you hit?” she demands because he’s ridiculous.

Steve shudders and blinks droplets of rain out of his eyes. He coughs and one of his hands curls in toward his chest. “Hurts,” he manages and Natasha realizes he’s having trouble breathing.

“ _Last bogey is down!”_ Sam reports in her ear and she relaxes a fraction—at least she doesn’t have to watch their backs  _and_  try to figure out how to deal with whatever’s happened to Steve.

“Let me see,” she says and pushes on Steve’s shoulders, trying to get him to spread out enough so she can get a look at his chest.

He makes a terrible wounded noise, and gasps.

She almost doesn’t see it. Then she notices there’s a strange spot on Steve’s ribs where she can see it depress slightly when he breathes in and expand when he breathes out.

Shit.

“Sam, get down here, I need you!” she barks and Steve says, “Wha'ssit?”

Natasha presses her lips together. “You’ve got a hole in you. What have I told you about my feelings on putting holes in yourself?”

“Don’t…like it.” Steve’s face is nearly as white as the stripes on his uniform.

“Damn right I don’t,” she mutters, looking up into the sky to try and locate Sam. Where  _is_  he?

She grimaces when Iron Man lands behind her, careful not to come in hard like he normally might. “What’s going on?” Tony asks.

He’s trying to play it cool, but Tony comes apart at the seams when any of them are injured and he’s especially prone to it when it comes to Steve.

“Steve’s hurt,” she replies curtly. “Falcon, report.”

“ _Sorry, got sidetracked, I’m on my way. Thirty seconds tops.”_

Tony kneels at her back and peers over her shoulder. “Thanks for being descriptive.” With a frown in his voice he asks, “Steve, are you having trouble breathing?”

“Uh…huh,” Steve forces out and grits his teeth, his eyes closing briefly.

Tony shifts, the gauntlets flexing. Sam touches down, booted feet slipping on the wet grass.

“What’ve we got?” he demands without preamble.

“Difficulty breathing,” Natasha reports. “Ribs are moving the wrong way. I’m guessing he broke a couple of ribs and punctured a lung.”

She hears a sharp intake of breath from Tony that she ignores.

Sam’s eyes are keen, moving over Steve’s body quickly in assessment and he’s already nodding. “Getting harder to breathe, huh, Steve?”

Steve nods jerkily and his fingers clench in the mud. “ _Hurts._ ”

“You broke a few ribs, I’m sure it hurts like hell,” Sam replies calmly as he starts pulling things out of the pockets in his pants. “Don’t have a needle, so we’re gonna have to make do with what we’ve got.”

Natasha grabs the shears when she spots them and starts cutting a chunk out of the uniform to expose Steve’s side.

“What are you going to do?” Tony asks, voice pitched high with nerves.

Sam glances up at him as he uncaps a scalpel. “I’m gonna cut a hole in him so the air getting trapped in his chest cavity can escape and give him room to breathe properly again.”

Tony makes a small distressed noise, but he waves his hands jerkily. “Where do you need me?”

“Pin him down best you can, I don’t think he’s going to like this much.”

Tony’s too upset to even key his mic off, so Natasha can hear the muttered pep talk he gives himself and his heavy breathing. He ends up half-sprawled across the right side of Steve’s body, pinning Steve’s shoulder with the gauntlets and his leg with the leg of the armor. “Not how I imagined getting up close and personal with you, Cap. You always gotta buck my expectations, huh?”

Steve doesn’t reply, his face crumpled with pain and the sheer effort of trying to breathe.

“All right,” Sam says, and then Steve  _screams_  and bucks underneath Tony.

Sam dodges the fist that comes flying toward him, and swears viciously. “Hold him, Tony!” he yells, “I gotta do it again, it wasn’t deep enough.”

“Fuck,” Tony spits and risks darting one hand out to grab Steve’s flailing wrist. He’s gasping in jerky bursts, still trying to heave Tony off, albeit with weaker and weaker attempts.

Sam darts in again the minute Steve’s hand is restrained and this time Steve sucks in a breath and moans pitifully, writhing in Tony’s grasp.

“Okay, okay, there you go,” Sam says, “I know it still hurts like a bitch, but you can breathe again, can’t you?”

Steve only sobs in reply.

The cut Sam made between Steve’s ribs is bubbling with blood on each exhale. Sam presses a defibrillator pad down over it and then sits back on his haunches. “That’s the worst of it?”

“I think so,” Natasha confirms and then taps the back of the Iron Man suit. “Tony, you can get off now.”

“Just…gimme a second,” Tony mutters.

“You gonna be sick?” Sam asks.

“Dunno yet,” Tony says tersely. “Gimme a minute.”

He doesn’t take that long though, inching back off of Steve to kneel in the mud beside him. One gauntled hand stays on Steve’s shoulder, squeezing.

“He’s going to be fine,” Natasha says, glancing at Sam for confirmation.

Sam nods wearily, raising a hand to wave at Thor, who’s headed toward them with a med crew. “This guy? Sure. He’ll walk it off.”

Steve huffs and then whimpers, the gauntlet of the suit he’s been offered creaking in his grip.

Natasha puts a hand to Steve’s thigh, and his eyes slit open to look at her, the muscle jumping under her palm. “We’ve got you, Steve,” she assures him. He nods, head dipping just a fraction, and then closes his eyes again, a shred of tension leaving his body.

The world is unkind, but she’s learning not to be.


End file.
